City of Chicago
$16.84 billion
How this works
About this budget explorer
A budget is a plan for spending public money. Open a big box to see the smaller boxes inside it. We show what the records say and tell you when they cannot answer a question.
Three different budgets
These governments have different budget years and accounting rules. Do not add their totals together as if they were one shared budget. The City headline is its net budget. Money counted twice is shown separately, not added to that headline.
What the labels mean
“In the budget” means an amount printed in a budget. “Adds up exactly” means detail tied to a published total. “Government estimate” is an estimate published by an agency. “Our estimate” is a calculation we made, not a printed allocation. “Leftover” is what remains after known parts are taken out. “Adjustment” can add or take away money. “Paid so far” describes actual payments for the period shown on that box, not the full-year budget. See the glossary.
How far can you open the boxes?
We measure the share of the absolute dollars in final boxes, so negative adjustments do not silently cancel positive boxes. “Strict” judges the size of the final box you actually reach. A second build rule treats a large group of budgeted positions as small when its per-position rate is under $1 million. That second rule is useful for building the tree, but it does not mean you can open the group into individual people.
| Budget | By the box you reach (strict) | If each budgeted position counts separately (build rule) |
|---|---|---|
| City of Chicago | 9.7% | 42.2% |
| Chicago Public Schools | 21.0% | 57.6% |
| Chicago Park District | 32.8% | 48.5% |
See what we could not find for the rest of the range. We do not divide a large amount merely to make it look detailed. Each box links to its evidence, and the sources page explains the documents and datasets.
Check our work
The site is built from a budget database and public source documents. The contribution guide explains how to inspect the build and report a mistake. These pages do not offer a separate JSON download for every box.